Money laundering

Following a deal signed between the Swiss government and the World Bank, Switzerland is to return approximately $321 million in seized assets to Nigeria, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The money was taken from the family of former Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha who was accused by corruption watchdog Transparency International of stealing up to $5 billion in public funds during his five years in power in the oil-rich country from 1993 until his death in 1998.

In a big thrust to the Indian government’s crackdown on black money inside and outside the country, a key parliamentary panel in Switzerland has approved an automatic information exchange pact between the two countries.
India had sought an approval from Switzerland to get an instant access to the details on Indians with accounts in Swiss banks.

The Committee on Economy and Royalties of the National Council or CER-N, a key panel of Swiss parliament which rejected on August 15 a proposal seeking to outrightly suspend implementation of the AEOI Switzerland has agreed to adopt with 41 nations including India, will examine the criteria a country would need to satisfy to start getting access to data under the automatic information exchange.

According to the minutes of the last meeting of the committee, the CER-N will continue its examination at a meeting on September 11 of the 41 AEOIs agreed upon by the Federal Council, the highest decision making body of Swiss government.

Former BSI banker Yeo Jiawei was on Wednesday sentenced to four-and-a-half years jail for money laundering and cheating, in a case linked to an investigation involving Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Yeo, 34, had set up multiple suspicious transactions involving 1MDB, and admitted he secretly profited at least $3.5 million from the illicit transactions. He laundered a portion of the money by transferring at least $500,000 into his parents’ bank account.

Prosecutors identified Yeo as a central figure linked to Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, who was characterised by US investigators as the controller of a plan to drain billions from 1MDB.

Indonesia and Switzerland have signed a joint declaration on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (AEOI) yesterday. The signing was held at the Directorate General of Tax in Central Jakarta.

At the signing ceremony, Indonesia was represented by Director General of Tax for the Finance Ministry Ken Dwijugeasteadi and Switzerland was represented by its Ambassador to Indonesia Yvonne Bauman. The signing was witnessed by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

Over 100,000 suspicious financial transactions were flagged in Italy in 2016, the Bank of Italy’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) said Monday. Of these, 619 transactions were flagged as possible terrorist financing, an 127 percent increase compared to 2015, Claudio Clemente, Director of the FIU reported this at the presentation of the Annual Report on the Unit’s activities in 2016.
According to the report, 37% of the suspicious transactions were related to individuals under investigation or otherwise flagged by authorities, and about one-fifth were related to non-profit organizations that were "mostly linked to local immigrant communities".

The Luxembourg Financial Sector Supervisory Commission (CSSF) have fined the local arm of Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild for its handling of funds linked to scandal-hit Malaysian investment fund 1MDB, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The CSSF communicated the conclusion of the administrative procedure to Edmond de Rothschild (Europe) on 21 June," the private bank said on Thursday.

Switzerland on Friday ratified the automatic exchange of financial account information with 40 other jurisdictions, among which are several emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia, to facilitate immediate sharing of details of suspected black money, even as it sought strict adherence to confidentiality and data security.

But before the exchange takes place, the government will now prepare a "situation report", it said in a statement.

"In the process, it will be checked whether the states and territories concerned effectively meet the requirements under the standard, especially those concerning confidentiality and data security," the government said.